Corporate payments struggling to catch retail innovation
The world of corporate payments will struggle to catch up to its faster-moving customer-facing cousin and may never manage to reach the same levels of innovation.
Corporate payments has different priorities to retail
That’s according to Currencycloud’s CMO and head of product Todd Latham, speaking to FinTech Futures about the company’s work in the payments space.
“I don’t think corporates will ever catch up,” he says. “Above anything else corporate buyers are really pragmatic, and they value consistency and stability. It’s hard to change things with a mindset like that.”
Companies, he adds, will always know that there are better opportunities out there, but often are having to deal with “a million things at once”. Things often boil down to the fact that while the existing systems may not be the fastest or easiest to use, they do their job and do it reasonably well.
“This is why the drive for customer experience in corporate payments will always lag behind the consumer space. But it will still follow the consumer space because expectations will continue to rise.
“I think the area where you start to see the technology really being utilised in the corporate world is when it drives massive benefits to their customers so they can grow their business more quickly.”
Related: Currencycloud raises £32m
Currencycloud launched its multicurrency account solution Spark in October, aimed at allowing firms to collect, store and make payments in 35 different currencies. Latham is excited about the opportunities this gives businesses cross-border.
“Spark creates for our customers a kind of global banking platform. You can be a UK bank and offer a euro account, a US dollar account, or a Hong Kong dollar account, which allows their customers to go to clients and invoice in local currencies.
“It’s so much more customer friendly – everyone wants to be paid in their own currency and it takes friction from the buying process. It means the supplier gets paid quicker and cross border fees are avoided.”
